Hamilton W. Pierson

“ The fact that such crimes have for years been committed with perfect impunity—that the men who perpetrate them have not the slightest fear or thought of ever being punished—that the Freedmen who have suffered outrages such as these, and others entirely too gross for me to repeat, have not the faintest shadow of a hope that their wrongs will ever be redressed, has reduced these poor people to a state of almost utter hopelessness and despair. ”

“ I have talked with many of these men, who in the late Presidential election, with a spirit as noble as ever beat in the heart of a martyr, slept in swamps for weeks, were hunted like wild beasts, and perilled all means of livelihood for their wives and children, and their own lives, that they might vote for General Grant for President. Those of them that were employed in the National Cemetery at Andersonville, Georgia, were threatened with dismission in case they voted for General Grant. ”

“ We have a deed of one-and-a-half acres of land, but there is no timber on it, and the owners of the land around have put up a paper forbidding us to cut a stick on their's, and see how tight they have got us. We want the Government or somebody to help us build. We want some law to protect us. We know that we could burn their churches and schools, but it is against the law to burn houses, and we don't want to break the law or harm anybody. We want the law to protect us, and all we want is to live under the law."
Andersonville, Feb. ”

“ Jones, Second Georgia Reserves, at Andersonville. I never received a blow or a harsh word from one of them. I have traveled a great deal before and since the war. I know that the colored people are more brutally treated now than they were in slavery times. A great many more are beaten, wounded and killed now than then. I know a great many cases where they have been beaten to death with clubs, killed with knives and dirks, shot and hung. We have no protection at all from the laws of Georgia. We had rather die than go back into slavery, but we are worse treated than we ever were before. ”

“ The fittest place for man to die,
Is where he dies for man."
We hung a wreath here, and again our procession moved forward and halted on the left (west) side of the avenue, at a tablet bearing the inspired words:
"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
Here we placed another wreath, and moved onward to a tablet on the right (east) side of the avenue, where we read—
"A thousand battle-fields have drunk
The blood of warriors brave,
And countless homes are dark and drear,
Thro' the land they died to save." ”

“ Turner Hall, a freedman, a deacon in the Congregational church in Andersonville, under whose black skin beats one of the most patriotic and noble Christian hearts I have ever known, writes: "We seem to be forsaken of God and man." ”

“ The colored people have become so impressed with the value of the school that they are contributing to its support with increasing liberality and enthusiasm.
As the schools for the freedmen are all suspended during the Christmas holidays, a number of teachers and their friends, in other places, had availed themselves of this opportunity to visit Andersonville. ”

“ I have never had a gun or pistol in my life. I lay in the woods every night until after election. Day times I came home and worked my crop. One day, as I was in my yard, Mr. Jack Childers, a Democrat, came along from Americus, and said to me, 'Where is old Dick, the damned old Radical?' I said, 'Here I am.' He said, 'Well, you will be certain to be killed.' I said, 'Well, if they kill me they will kill a good old Radical, and I haven't got much longer to live noway.' He then started to get out of his buggy and come at me, but the man with him held him in and drove on. ”

“ Some able-bodied men got twenty-five cents a day. Some of them, (Deacon Turner Hall, of the Congregational Church, Andersonville, among the number,) walked from ten to twenty miles a day, and could get neither homes nor work at any price at all. Many women and children lay out of doors guarding their things, and exposed to the weather nearly a week, before they could get any shelter at all—their husbands and fathers roaming over the country to find some kind of a home. ”

“ The unanimous expression of approbation on the part of the Society, which your paper elicited, is an earnest of the satisfaction with which your consent to lecture will be received by the public at large. ”

“ In the first place, they know you to be a wandering vagrant carpet bagger, without visible means of support, and living at present on the earnings of those who are endeavoring to make an honest living by teaching. ”

“ Crawford claims that the land which lies within and around the south stockade, in which are the hospital sheds, where so many of our soldiers died, where even now the bare ground upon which they lay shows the indenture made by the bodies of our suffering dying soldiers, belongs to certain heirs, and he, too, has been endeavoring to get possession of these grounds. My pastoral visitations led me to the cabins in and around the stockades, that have been built upon the land now claimed by Mr. ”

“ He told these men that he would have killed me if they had not prevented him. As he started away to attend the burying of his nephew's wife, he said to me, 'Now you may go to Perry,' (the county seat,) 'and report me if you want; but if you do I'll be d——d if I don't kill you.' At night my wife heard him tell Charles Evart, a freedman, about the scrape, and he said he would have killed me if they had not held him, and he would kill me anyway, if I reported him. I was a slave until freed the by war, but I never received such treatment during all my life as a slave. ”

“ Nelson Tift, to go before his constituents and deny my statements in regard to the social standing of these men.
The above letter states my offence: "You have proved yourself a scoundrel of the deepest dye, by maliciously interfering in matters which do not in the least concern you, to the detriment of some of our citizens." But General Grant, General Wade, and Captain Bean interfered far more potentially than I did. If I am a "scoundrel of the deepest dye" what must they be? ”

“ But with facts like these in mind can anyone suppose that a fair election—an election in which the thousands of Freedmen in Georgia shall give expression to their political wishes—can be held in that State in 1870. The thing is simply impossible. Until these ignorant, outraged people shall have some demonstration that there is power, either in the State or Federal Government, to afford them protection, and punish such outrages as that of Rev. ”

“ Souber had charge of the land, and about the first of January he applied to him to rent what he had cleared and fenced. Mr. Souber told him that he had charge of the land but it was not for rent; he was agoing to tend it himself. He then asked me what Mr. Williams was agoing to do. I told him I did not know. He said well, he had better hunt him a house, for I am agoing to tend that place myself. Mr. Weston says he has never had any pay for clearing and fencing the land, only about ten bushels of corn, as above stated. He says he will make oath to the above statements. ”

“ STATEMENTS OF ALBERT WILLIAMS, MARTHA RANDALL, JANE ROGERS, AND BENJAMIN WESTON.
Albert Williams states to me that in January after the surrender he was employed by the Government to work in the cemetery, and worked there until last spring. That Mr. Van [Pg 15] Dusen, Supt. of the cemetery, gave him the privilege of moving into the house he now occupies, near the stockade that enclosed the hospital buildings; that afterwards Captain Rench gave him the privilege of clearing off the ground east of the stockade and raising a crop; that he hired hands and cleared and fenced about fifteen acres ”

“ No one of the men [Pg 8] engaged in these outrages, has ever been arrested or punished in any way, and no one of these freedmen has ever had any redress for his sufferings and losses. I will make oath to these statements."
Andersonville, Ga., Feb. 12, 1869.
STATEMENT OF GEORGE SMITH.
George Smith now resides five miles from Ellaville, in Schley County, Georgia. He says:
"Before the election of Grant, large bodies of men were riding about the country in the night for more than a month. ”

“ Nearly all the Radicals in the neighborhood lay in the woods every night for two weeks before election. The Kuklux would go to the houses of all that belonged to the Grant club, call them to the door, throw a blanket over them and carry them off and whip them, and try and make them promise to vote for Seymour and Blair. The night I saw them they went to the house of Mr. ”